Plus-sized: These two words alone make some people squeamish, some ashamed and others proud. I am a plus-sized woman. I have to go to the back of the store for jeans, I have to special order swimsuits, I have to watch people whisper about my thighs in shorts or my stomach in crop tops. I know, I know, I'm not the only one who feels this way, regardless of my size. But, we live in a double-zero world, where girls are told from birth they should look a certain way and only that way. Eating disorders have become glamorized and romanticized, Photoshop rules the tabloids, and woman are constantly at each others' throats simply for the number on their scale. I am a plus-sized girl in a double-zero world.

I remember being in elementary school, I wasn't the heaviest girl in my class but I certainly wasn't the skinniest. I had been "in love" with the same boy since elementary school, and he just didn't have the same feeling for me—he liked someone else. Finally, I had enough and came home crying convinced there was something wrong with me, devastated that he didn't like me back. Seeking comfort, I began to tell my mom about how many times I had tried to tell this boy how I felt about him, I remember my mother's response as if it was yesterday: "Trish, he likes her because she's more like his mom...skinnier, and he's probably going to like girls close to her size his whole life." I was devastated. I ran into my bedroom mortified at the fate I was destined to have—a fate where I would never be skinny enough. Young girls are told from such an early age how they should look, how society defines beauty and how they may never achieve that. I was always an intelligent student, but the boys never talked about how smart the girls were. Media never talks about how intelligent women such as Emma Watson are, instead they talk about how "puberty hit her beautifully." Women are being force-fed that their minds don't matter, it's all about how tiny their waist is and what size cup they are. Being plus-sized in a world where I'm supposed to be stick-thin hurts. It hurts many women close to my heart. It hurts beautiful girls who struggle with their size, it hurts young girls who want to look like their favorite artist, it hurts parents who hospitalized their baby girl after she passes out at the football game all because she hasn't eaten more than 300 calories all week—it hurts.

Whenever I go shopping with friends, I'm forced to smile and laugh while we pass the Victoria's Secret store, covered in lavishly dressed thin models staring blankly at passers-by, while deeply analyzing my body in contrast to theirs. I have stretch marks, dimples and jiggle in areas where they are smooth, sleek and flawless. Photoshop. I remind myself they have been perfected to sell product, to target every woman's weakness: her body. As women, we are each built differently, we have various shapes and sizes of bodies, each beautiful in their own way. But media doesn't express the beauty of the mother, who let her body become forever changed for the sake of her beautiful children. They don't express the beauty of the woman who had the total mastectomy and survived cancer. They don't display the scars of the woman who fought for our country, they don't express the beauty of real women we see every day. The don't express true beauty.

Being plus-sized in a double-zero world isn't the problem. Yes, some days I'm ashamed of my body and fight not to starve myself in order to meet society's current beauty standards. But, my size isn't the problem. The fact that your friend who is absolutely stunning, has a parent who has told her from childhood "You're getting a little chubby dear, maybe you should do some sit ups," isn't even the real problem. Society is the problem. Modern society has decided that its concept of beauty is more important than the mental and physical health of the daughters we are raising. We see posts all over social media about how boys will still love you during your struggle with anorexia and bulimia, about how they understand why you want to be thin. Media throws "the perfect body" in the faces of young girls from the moment they are old enough to think for themselves. They shove "quick and easy weight loss" plans down the throats of teenage girls who don't feel good enough. They tell women no matter what, you'll never be good enough. Thin girls gossip about how their heavier friend should lose weight, heavy girls talk about how that skinny girl should eat a burger. Women are attacking each other in such a vicious fashion. No woman is safe. The stick-thin woman with a high metabolism is bashed for being "too thin," the curvy girl who just happens to have the best a** ever is told "she looks like a wh*re," the heavy woman with Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is told "she'd be beautiful if she lost a few pounds." You are all beautiful, no matter what. No matter what the scale says, no matter how many scars or stretch marks you have, no matter what your story is—you are beautiful. We are all in the war against society's promotion of body shaming, and it needs to end now. We need to hold each other up and support our unique shapes and sizes when no one else will.

I am a plus-sized girl in a double-zero world, and that has made all the difference.